Buttons and Bones Read online

  “Ahhhh,” sighed Jill at last, dusting her hands and brushing at the long sleeves of her shirt, satisfied that the porch was clear. There were still a few webs stretched between the roof of the porch and the debarked logs of the cabin’s front wall.

  Lars opened the sagging screen door and unlocked the gray wooden door behind it. He had to push hard—and he was a big, strong man—before the door opened with a groan.

  Emma Beth came close behind her father and mother into the cabin, Betsy bringing up the rear holding Erik’s wee little hand.

  The house appeared dark after the bright sunlight of the clearing, and they all stood a few moments to allow their eyes time to adjust.

  They stood at one end of an open room twenty-four feet front to back. The walls were chinked logs and the ceiling ran up past the rafters to the boards of the roof. There was badly worn pink linoleum in the dining area and a flattened, elderly, gray-blue carpet on the living room area. The windows were small, about four feet above the floor, and twice as wide as they were high.

  The adults and children were standing in the dining area furnished with an elderly card table and three folding chairs. The air was warm but musty—Lars went to pull open a window.

  A pot-bellied stove squatted on a metal plate that crossed the border between the dining and living areas. Beyond it were a sofa and chair made of yellow logs, each with folded dark blue blankets and sleeping bags in lieu of cushions.

  A small, seriously out-of-date kitchen was on their right—the stove actually appeared to be the sort that burned wood, and the refrigerator was an old-fashioned ice box—which explained the two large bags of ice cubes in the rearmost part of the SUV. There was a windowed back door on the far wall leading to a back porch. The place was shabby but orderly.

  “Nice!” pronounced Erik cheerfully. Though not yet two, he had a budding vocabulary.

  “Are we going to sleep here?” asked Emma, not happily.

  “Yes, darling. You and Erik get the bedroom; Mama and Daddy will sleep on the back porch.”

  “Where is the bedroom?” asked Emma.

  “Over here.” Jill led the way to the farther of two doors, which opened into a room about twelve by twelve. It had a full-size bed with a foam-rubber mattress. “We threw the old mattress out,” she said to Betsy. “The mice had made an apartment building of it.”

  Emma laughed. “Apar’ment building for the mice!”

  There was an ancient, dark brown wicker chest of drawers, a matching wicker bookcase, and a wicker nightstand. A battery lantern, the kind with a hard plastic shade, was on the nightstand.

  “You’ll each get your sleeping bag and you’ll sleep side by side, comfortable as two bugs in a rug.”

  “Bug!” shouted Erik joyously. “Bug!” He made a wet buzzing noise and laughed.

  “Will we hear the loons tonight?” asked Betsy.

  Emma said anxiously, “No, no, they aren’t here.”

  “Yes, they are,” said Jill firmly. She added, to Betsy, “She’s heard them on camping trips and is afraid of them.”

  Lars said, “If you hear them and they scare you, you come and tell me.”

  “If I cry, you will make them go away!” said Emma Beth, pleased.

  “No, for two reasons. Can you guess what they are?”

  Emma Beth shook her head.

  “First, because they can’t hurt you. In fact, they are very shy and afraid of people. They’re just birds, about the size of ducks. You aren’t afraid of ducks, are you?”

  Emma shook her head, smiling at the notion that she’d be afraid of a duck.

  “Second, because this is their home. You wouldn’t like it if someone bigger than us came and chased us out of our house, would you?”

  “You wouldn’t let them!”

  “Well, if they were bigger than me—”

  “Nobody’s bigger than you, Daddy!”

  Lars laughed. He was six feet, six inches tall and proportionately broad, a blond Viking with narrow, sea gray eyes, and perhaps a touch too much jaw. “That’s mostly true, I guess. But people here have agreed to share the lake with the loons and the ducks and the turtles. And what does that mean about the loons?”

  Emma conceded, “We don’t bother them. But they bother us!”

  “No, they bother you. I like them.”

  Emma turned to her mother with a pleading face. “No, honey face,” said Jill, “I like them, too.”

  “Nice!” contributed Erik, unsolicited.

  So Emma turned to her godmother. “Do you like loons?”

  Betsy said, “I don’t know. I want to sit up tonight and listen for them. Then I’ll tell you.”

  Jill said, “I think that’s a good idea. Now come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place and tell you our plans for it.”

  The bathroom had been furnished in the fifties with a secondhand pedestal sink and a toilet with an overhead tank—which actually put them right back in style. Without electricity to operate a pump, there was no water. Lars tried the toilet, which obediently flushed. But the bucket on the floor clearly indicated where the water for a repeat performance came from.

  “That old-fashioned pump out in the yard is currently the sole source for all our water,” said Lars. “It’s good water, doesn’t taste of iron like a lot of water up here.”

  Jill said, “We’ll have electricity soon, and we’ll install a hot water heater and a new kitchen stove operating off a propane tank, which we’ll also install.”

  Lars said, “The water pump is in, it just needs electricity to make it work.”

  Jill smiled. “I want to replace that tub with a shower. Wait till I show you the catalog photo of the tile I want to use in here. Meanwhile, this weekend I think we should get rid of the carpet.”

  “It is kind of musty in here,” said Lars. He stepped back into the bedroom to open the window over the bed. Like those in the rest of the cabin, it was double paned to swing inward from the middle, and screened on the outside. A welcome pine-scented breeze drifted in.

  The back porch ran the width of the cabin and had large windows. Amazingly, the screens were intact, if rusty, which was great because the windows were unglazed. The porch was furnished with a daybed, settee, chair, and rocker, all made of small yellow logs.

  “These were all covered with quilts,” noted Jill. “Ancient, faded, moldy quilts.”

  “Oh, too bad!” said Betsy. “I love old quilts.”

  “Mama said the mice weed on them,” said Emma Beth in a low, scandalized voice.

  “Yes, they did,” said Jill. “And chewed them just about to ribbons. We had to throw them away with the mattress. But look here.” In a metal-clad chest under a window were more quilts. Protected from rain and sun, all they needed was a good airing.

  “I’m going to go get the ice put away,” said Lars, “and start bringing in the luggage.”

  The top quilt, a twin size, was a double wedding ring pattern, worked in still-bright shades of red, purple, green, and blue. “You can sleep under this tonight,” said Jill to Betsy. The one under it was full size, in a pattern called log cabin, made of blocks of narrow brown, gray, and tan strips, each block having a traditional red square in its center. Very likely the quilter made this one especially for the cabin, thought Betsy. And under that—“Hey, where are the children?” asked Jill, missing their chatter.

  As if in reply, there came a loud, high-pitched scream from outside.

  Four

  BEFORE Jill could get to the back door, Lars came rushing through from inside the cabin. Betsy turned to look out one of the big screened windows, with Jill suddenly beside her.

  The screamer was Emma Beth. She was standing on the top of the switchback path leading down the steep hill, making a sound like an overheated teakettle. And rolling away from her down the trail was Airey, his red hair flashing in the broken sunlight, emitting a thin, uneven wail.

  Lars ran after him in a series of huge plunges. Emma Beth’s shrill cries cut off when
she saw her father in action. He leaped over his son as he neared him. As he slid to a backward stop, Airey rolled onto his boot tops. Lars swooped him up. The baby shed dead leaves, pine needles, and bits of weed as Lars held him dangling at arm’s length, but after a moment’s shocked silence Airey said uncertainly, “Nice?”

  Lars laughed his big laugh and hugged the boy. “Very nice!” he declared. Then he looked him over for injuries, finding nothing but a few scratches. “You were very brave, Airey,” he declared. “But don’t go outside again unless we come, too, okay?”

  “ ’Kay?” echoed the uncomprehending toddler.

  “And you, young lady,” Lars added in an entirely different tone, starting back for the top.

  Emma Beth said hastily, “I din’t know he’d fall. We just wanted to see the lady. I thought she was a bear but she was a lady.”

  Jill said from the doorway, “If you look out and see a bear, you’d better stay in the cabin. Don’t go near it. Bears think little children are delicious.”

  Emma Beth disagreed, shaking her head. “No, no, if you are a good girl, you can pet a bear.”

  “Only with a hand you don’t want anymore,” said Lars, reaching the top and touching his daughter on her fair head. The touch was gentle, but his expression was very firm.

  Emma Beth looked up at him, her eyes gone large and round. “He would bite my hand off?”

  “Truly. And then your ears, and then your nose. Bears around here aren’t tame and they aren’t nice.” He looked hard at his son. “Bears are not nice,” he repeated.

  “No’ nice,” said Airey. “No’ nice,” he repeated to his sister in a firm voice.

  “Oh-kay,” said Emma Beth, discouraged. She brightened. “But it wasn’t a bear, it was a lady.”

  “Where did you see a lady?” asked Lars.

  “Over there, in the middle of the trees.” Emma Beth pointed to a place at the top of the steep hill where the trees were thickly clustered.

  “What did she look like, darling?” asked Jill.

  “I don’t know. She was just a lady. She had on brown so I thought she was a bear. I couldn’t see her very good.”

  “See her very well,” corrected Jill.

  “See her very well,” repeated Emma Beth obediently.

  “Did she say anything, or wave?”

  “No, she saw me seeing her and went away.”

  “Did she run away?”

  Emma Beth thought. “No, she just walked away. I thought she was a bear. Mama, are all bears naughty?”

  With her eyes, Jill was searching the area Emma Beth had indicated, looking for the brown lady. She said, “I’m sure the bears don’t think they are being naughty. They’re just hungry.”

  Emma Beth looked around, drawing up her little shoulders. “Maybe we should go home now.”

  Lars laughed. “No, it’s all right with the animals if we come for a visit. But don’t touch. And if you want to go out for a walk, you must bring Mama or Daddy with you, all right? Or you might get lost, or see a bear and accidentally bother him, and he wouldn’t like that.”

  “Bears won’t eat mamas or daddies,” concluded Emma Beth.

  “That’s right. Now, how about I set up the grill and cook some hot dogs for you and Airey?”

  Later, over grilled hot dogs and potato salad—they’d found a crumbling picnic table in the shed on an earlier visit and dragged it out now—Betsy asked, “Why Airey? Why not Ricky?”

  “Emma Beth started calling him Airey,” said Jill, “and like a lot of fond, doting parents, we thought it was so cute we imitated her. And now it’s stuck. Of course he knows his full name, Erik Sigurd Larson, after his two grandfathers, because that’s what I call him when he’s misbehaving.”

  Betsy nodded, feeling grateful on behalf of the toddler that at least one grandfather had a name that could pass muster in any company. Knut and Bjorn were not uncommon names among old-fashioned Norwegians, nor was Swan. Somehow Betsy did not think Erik—Airey—would thank his parents for naming him Airey Swan.

  All the leftovers were scrupulously gathered into a plastic bag, which would be taken away when they left. “People around here have some strict rules about it,” said Lars. “No one wants the bears to learn that humans are a source of food.”

  “Bears like hot dogs better than noses,” declared Emma Beth.

  “It’s possible they do,” said Lars, nodding.

  “Nose!” Airey said, pointing at his own tiny appendage, and broke into loud laughter.

  After lunch they all took the path of steep switchbacks down to the lakeshore. About halfway down, Emma Beth said to Betsy, “That’s the biggest tree I ever saw,” and pointed to an enormous white pine.

  “Wow, that is big,” said Betsy, looking up and searching futilely for the top branches, hidden beyond the tops of the other trees.

  Emma Beth and Airey preceded their parents on a detour to the base of the tree. Emma Beth tried to hug it, but her little arms could not reach even a quarter of the way around. Betsy came to help, but it was only when Jill and Airey joined in that they managed, barely, to encircle the tree with their arms.

  Betsy became aware that a “kree, kree, kree” bird sound she’d been hearing for a while seemed to be coming from the top of this giant.

  “Do you know what kind of bird is calling?” she asked.

  “It’s a bald eagle,” said Jill. “Didn’t I tell you? We have our very own bald eagle family nesting in the top of this tree. This is their fifth year, according to the locals. Last year they raised two youngsters, this year only one. That’s him calling. He’s fully fledged, and it’s time for him to make his first flight, so his parents have stopped feeding him.”

  “You have your very own bald eagle family? This place of yours just gets cooler and cooler! Where are his parents? Did they abandon him?”

  “No, they’re around here somewhere, keeping watch.”

  As if to illustrate, a descending “skreeee” sounded from down near the bottom of the hill, a sound made familiar from television.

  The youngster, encouraged by the reply, called again and again, but all he got was an occasional reply from the adults.

  Airey stooped and picked up a small, dark brown feather from amid a low heap of dead leaves. He looked it over thoughtfully while a sentence formed in his head. “Baby bird,” he said at last, holding it out to his mother.

  “You know, I think you’re right, I think this did belong to the baby up in the nest,” said Jill. “But we can’t keep it, it’s an eagle feather and we are not allowed to have an eagle feather. Put it back—and find something else.”

  Airey made a disappointed face, but put the feather back exactly where he had found it, and instead picked up a tiny, long-needled twig of pine. He held it out for inspection, and his mother approved, so he pushed it into a pocket of his overalls.

  They returned to the switchback trail and continued to the lakeshore. There was no sandy beach, but a grassy clearing that stood about a foot above the level of the water. Grass hung over in a fringe whose edges just touched the tops of the little waves that lapped the shore. There was a smoke-blackened fire pit near where an adolescent aspen leaned steeply out over the water.

  “We’re going to lose that tree,” predicted Lars. “Next heavy rainstorm it’ll fall in.”

  “Poor thing,” said Betsy. She stood on the bank and looked out over the lake. There was a round island about eighty yards out with a fallen-down cabin sitting among big trees near the shore. Betsy had looked at a map of Cass County before coming on this trip and been amused to notice that the lake was shaped like a duckling mostly. That is, the back end was a confusion of marsh and ponds without a clearly defined tail and feet, but the long body and one stubby wing were clear and the head had a perfectly shaped bill. Even the island was properly placed to be an eye.

  “Why isn’t this lake called Duck Lake?” she asked now.

  Jill said, “Because every now and then it gives out a sound like
thunder. No one knows why. The sound seems to come from the deepest part of the lake, which is just a little down from where we are. It’s spring fed, and the movement of water may cause earth on the bottom to shift and rocks to fall or grind. It doesn’t do it very often or predictably, so no one’s been able to witness it happening down there. But it happens often enough to earn the name Thunder Lake.”

  “Is that little house ours, too?” asked Emma Beth, pointing at a miniature log building on the Larson property just up from where they were standing.

  “Yes, it’s a boat house,” said Lars. “When we come next year, we will put a boat in there.”

  “Can we go for a boat ride?” asked Emma Beth.

  The Larsons had brought an inflatable rowboat with them.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” said Lars. “I want to get up on the roof today and see how my patch is holding up.”

  “And I want to explore the shed,” said Jill, “to see if we can convert it into a garage. And start taking up the carpet. But we can come back down here tonight and build a campfire if you like. Make s’mores.”

  “Yayyyyy!” cheered Emma Beth, doing a little dance. She had enjoyed them at a backyard barbecue earlier in the summer.

  “Aaaaaaay!” echoed Airey, waving his arms. He was not sure of the reason, but pleased to join the fun.

  “Do you have any neighbors around here?” asked Betsy as they started the trip back up the slope.

  Lars said, “About half a mile down the shore there’s another cabin exactly like this one, or near enough, owned by a bachelor fisherman. The man who built ours made a career out of building log cabins for summer visitors; there are six or eight of them on lakes in the area. In the other direction, about a quarter mile from here, we have a young couple. He’s a dentist and she’s a pharmacist. But instead of a cabin, they have a modern house, though they use it just in the summer. The next cabin is more than a mile away, but we hear more are to be built next year, if the market recovery holds up. There are only a dozen cabins currently on Thunder Lake.”